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Ever wanted to get tooled up, gather a few mates together and set off into magical worlds containing all manner of weird creatures? Well, now's your chance. Playing a Paladin requires skill and cunning, as it's in their job description to solve puzzles, rescue prisoners and save villages. And whilst completing these quests is a task in itself, the overall game objective is to take your Paladin from the status of freshly-trained novice to a hardened, matchless veteran.

Progress is never easy in these quests so a team of assorted allies are provided (consisting of an array of Mages, Rangers, Swordsmen and Thieves) who must interact with each other using their individual abilities to overcome obstacles and opponents and thus complete the quest. The Paladin (that's you, that is) has four abilities which increase with time and experience. As these four skills improve you are given new titles to reflect your greater status and your overall performance and, more importantly, your movement points (reflecting the number of actions you can perform each go) are increased. Phew!

The land is populated by a vast number of death-inducing creatures who all require different offensive and defensive procedures. The weirder beasts include a 'Doppleganger' (a kind of nasty chameleon) and a 'Displacer Beast' who always appear one square away from where they really are.

So then, the characters have been introduced, the scenes have been set, let's take a look what we're here to see, namely the game itself.

Sexy strategy games are hard to find, with most being poor slap-dash affairs consisting of slow-moving and badly-drawn sprites. Just because they're supposed to appeal more to the thinkers among us doesn't necessarily mean that presentation should be the last thing considered, does it?

Anyway, guess what we have here? Initially the game promises more than it delivers with a rather nice opening consisting of a groovy title screen and blissfully relaxing accompanying music. Things soon start to progress idly downhill though, and once into game proper the real flaws leap out of the screen at you.

Now, I don't dislike this game specifically because it's a strategy game - I enjoyed Sabre Team (reviewed this issue) immensely, and the two games act have a lot in common, what with the alternating turns and 'movement points' system.

Unfortunately, although you don't have to wait so long between goes as in Sabre Team, all Paladin consists of is slow trekking across the screen and hardly any action. When your party of travellers does come across a group of baddies the battles seem unfair and frustrating. Casting spells is a hit and miss affair and more often than not you are simply told 'the spell failed' with no explanation to stop you from making the same mistake again.

Seeing as you could have wasted a large fraction of your movement points attempting the spell it seems a trifle harsh that no reason for its failure is given. Of course, come the enemy's go the evil mages chuck the spells around like there's no tomorrow. The mission builder is a necessary addition as the missions supplied are dull in the extreme and all seem to consist of milling about waiting to be attacked. I don't know - maybe if you were deeply into these sorts of games you might read more into it than I have but if you're anything like me and you happen to be in my car then you'll be steering well clear. Sorry.